Europe divided

Arguments over immigration policy were this week exposing deep divisions across the EU – and threatening to bring down Germany’s coalition government. Germany’s Chancellor Merkel is embroiled in a tense dispute with her interior minister, Horst Seehofer – the leader of the CSU, the
sister party to her CDU. A long-time critic of her “open doors” policy, Seehofer is threatening to defy EU law by ordering police to turn away refugees at Germany’s borders if they have registered in another EU state. This week he gave Merkel – who hopes to agree a new pan-European framework for handling asylum applications at the EU’s summit next week – a fortnight to find a resolution to the dispute.

Last week, after Italy’s new populist government closed its ports to a rescue ship carrying 629 migrants  Austria’s Chancellor Kurz called for a new Berlin-Rome- Vienna “axis” to push for tougher migration policies.

EU immigration policy is “a shambles”, said The Times. Three years after Merkel admitted almost a million people into Germany, the bloc’s “political class” has still to agree any coherent response. Result: EU-wide frustration and the rise of populist parties, who have won an “important recruit” in Seehofer. Sentiment is hardening in Germany, said Die Welt (Berlin). A recent poll found that 62% of voters are in favour of turning away undocumented migrants. If Merkel can’t make a deal that reflects the national mood, we face the risk of a coalition breakdown and elections that will “inevitably” benefit the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

EU states seem to be in a “race to the bottom” on immigration, said The Observer. Once-fringe ideas like “asylum-processing” centres in Africa are now being backed by the likes of France’s President Macron. Instead of abandoning the world’s most desperate people to their fates, the EU must agree a fair and humanitarian system for processing and resettling migrants, to appease the anger in southern European nations that has fuelled the populist surge.

There was a time when I dismissed the Brexiteer claim that in quitting the EU, we’d be leaving
a “sinking ship”, said Niall Ferguson in The Sunday Times. No longer. It looks increasingly as
though future historians will regard immigration as the “fatal solvent” that led to the bloc’s
disintegration. They will argue that a massive influx of people (an estimated two million arrived
in 2016 alone) derailed the dream of European integration, exposed the bloc’s weakness and
drove voters back to their national governments for solutions. Brexit will be viewed as only an
early symptom of the crisis, as Europeans begin to realise how hard it is to maintain both open
borders and welfare states. A change in attitudes to the EU is clear in Germany. Merkel’s CDU
has been allied with the Bavarian CSU since 1949, said Wolfgang Münchau in the FT. But
her support for European integration has now collided with the CSU’s unilateralism. “It is the
essential conflict in European politics of our time”, and an early climax looks inevitable.

Merkel still hopes to avert a domestic showdown, said Juliet Samuel in The Daily Telegraph.
The chancellor has been convening meetings with EU leaders before next week’s summit, to
pave the way for an immigration deal that is acceptable to her CSU allies. But she’s unlikely to
succeed because, on this issue, “Europe is stuck”. Its pro-Brussels politicians support the idea of
migrants being shared more evenly between member states, to relieve the pressure on countries
like Italy – but face bitter opposition to that idea at home. Anti-EU politicians, meanwhile, are
furious either that the EU isn’t doing more to help them deal with migrants (e.g. Italy) or that
it’s trying to force them to take migrants (e.g. Hungary). Still, it’s too early to write off Merkel,
said The Economist. She’s still the most popular politician in Germany, and polls indicate that
voters are tiring of Seehofer’s “theatrics”. What Germans prize above all is stability; as long as
Merkel looks like stability’s best “guarantor” she will remain “a force to be reckoned with”.